A major goal of the San Diego Center for Systems Biology is to substantively contribute to the development of, and shape the practice of Systems Biology at the local, national and international level. The mission of the Dissemination and Research Training Core is to broaden the impact of the Centers advances in addressing conceptual and technological challenges to develop to Systems Biology community at local, regional, national and international levels. to ensure ongoing training of current leaders in meeting the challenges of Systems Biology, Many of the activities described here build on the experience of running programming for the San Diego Consortium for Systems Biology. The SDCSB (http://www.sdcsb.org) was established in 2004 by Drs. Kiger and Chanda as a grass-roots collaborative effort between the Division of Biological Sciences at UCSD and The Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF), to spark the development of a network to advance Systems Biology in the San Diego scientific community. It has grown to encompass all major research institutes in the San Diego/Torrey Pines area, with significant participation and financial support from the local biotech and pharmaceutical industry. This grass roots initiative has been successful at bringing together local scientists across institutional and disciplinary boundaries to share ideas, expertise and resources around Systems Biology. Specifically SDCSB has hosted 4 annual Systems-to-Synthesis Symposia, and 9 workshops on a variety of topics. Leadership has largely been provided by Drs. Kiger, Chanda and Hoffmann. However, maintaining this level of engagement requires institutional support, particularly organizationally financial support can continue come from sponsorship by local Biotech. Subsuming the Consortium into the new Center for Systems Biology is therefore in the broad interest of the areas Systems community.